


The Monster I Love

by antiheroines



Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: AU, Alarkling - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Angst, F/M, Modern AU, One Shot, Romance, Teenagers, beach, darkles has a car?, excerpt, just because i had some alarkling feels, theyre both teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-25 07:28:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13829379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antiheroines/pseuds/antiheroines
Summary: a very short alarkling au where they're driving on the beach and being all cutesy and stuff.for maximum effect, listen to "wake up" by EDEN while reading.





	The Monster I Love

**Author's Note:**

> (this is a part of a larger fanfic that i wrote ages ago; maybe when i finish some stuff i'm already writing, i'll post all of it).

_nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands._

\-- Edgar Allen Poe

* * *

I’ve never thought of myself as a beach girl. Sometimes back at home I’d sprawl on the edge of my dorm bed and spread out magazine cuttings that I’d salvaged from Ana Kuya’s redundant lifestyle and homeware magazines, arranging them carefully, piece by piece. Put together, the hodgepodge of photos made a map to where I wanted to go, who I wanted to be. Rolling, deep waters, shifting skies; in my hands I’d hold the bits and pieces of a life that I knew I could never really have.

Every ordinary little girl dreams of being a princess. Not me. I had dreamed of being an ordinary little girl.

I never got there. I was never a princess, either. But now I’m here, and I don’t want to leave this moment behind. I want to stay in this car with Aleks and curl up with him, want to lay my head on his chest and sleep, finally at peace with the world.

“Alina,” Aleks says, exhaling as he says my name. I don’t dare to look up. I’m too afraid of what I’ll feel.

So we just sit there, staring out at the sunset over the waves. Funny. In the pictures, the waves were always a crystal-clear blue, a perfect mirror of the sky above, perfect golden sand stretching out before it. Here, in real life, it is different, but a good kind of different. We have smooth grey pebbles instead of sunlit sand, and there are flowers growing up through the cracks. The waters aren’t an inviting blue, but a dark so deep you could willingly drown in it. The sky is shifting, not in bright colours, but in soft hues that cast an almost ethereal glow over everything.

The waves crash. The car radio crackles. And beside me, Aleks is quiet, staring out at the world with the same intensity that I do. We’re the same, him and I. Totally different, too. I never expect what he’s going to do, but I’m never surprised when he does it.

Which is why I’m not shocked when his hand comes to rest lightly on mine. It’s so gentle, barely as heavy as a breath.

“I...” he starts, and I can’t look up yet, so I focus on the feel of his fingers on top of mine. It’s like he’s afraid to touch me. As afraid as I am.

Fear is good for nothing.

So I take his hand fully in mine, and finally, I look up at him.

The walls are down. His eyes are right on mine, and the emotions in them are as tangled and messy as the hair that frames them. He’s trying to control his breathing. My chest hurts, too. In a way I could never have imagined before.

“What is it you want, Aleks?” I say, because someone has to.

“I want...” he trails off again. Then he closes his eyes, as if to assure himself that _it’s okay, it’s okay,_ and he says, “I want to be able to love you.”

“To be able to love me?”

“I want your permission.” He cracks a crooked grin. “Before I let myself go.”

“You have my permission,” I say, but add with a wink, “just remember that I’m not a peninsula.”

“No, you’re Alina,” he says, and reaches a hand up to cup my face, I think, but I don’t know because I grab it and I pull him close and his eyes widen and all of a sudden nothing is real and—

He’s kissing me. It’s so soft that I think my heart might break. He’s kissing me like he’s terrified of me, terrified of himself, and it’s this which splinters the cracks in my heart and sends a hundred fissure lines down its seam. I don’t know how to describe it. I let go of his hand and my hands come to rest in his hair – so smooth under my fingers, so warm. He’s holding my face now, and the whole thing is fragile and beautiful, like the moment when you jump and the falling gives way to flying.

The radio’s signal gets stronger. I can hear words now, a song whispering along with the beach as I let myself feel again. _Stay, you’re not gonna leave me._

 _Stay,_ I think, because it seems impossible that I can hold onto something as beautiful as this forever. _Stay._

And when the kiss deepens, I can’t hear the music anymore.

All I know is him.

All I know is that there is a light inside of me, struggling to get out from under my skin, and he crowds towards it like the way moths flutter around a lamp; trying so hard to get closer, but never touching, because he doesn’t want to get burned.

But he is Aleks, and he won’t burn so easily. It'll take more than this to turn him to ashes. Maybe he is the only one who won’t ever be burned, my monster with his stone eyes and his shadows.

The monster I love.


End file.
